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I've been nagged to write something here, so apologies in advance for my vague and meandering note, wherever it might take me. And apologies for breaking with tradition by failing to write this in the third person, at least until such a time as I'm nagged again!

I'm Christine, or at least I am now, both in terms of my real name and my username: it's just the feminised version of my birth name, but I'm a lot happier with it; and it's the latest in a series of usernames including Vometia (as I'm known most places) and cbh (my initials) because I seem to be fundamentally incapable of deciding what to call myself!

Me, yesterday

At the time of writing, I'm 45 years old, and transitioned when I was 43. In my case, "transition" was a rather gradual process, but December 2011 is when I formally changed my name, so that seems as good a date as any if I have to choose one. That followed two or three years of prevarication which in turn followed a long period of living in denial and making myself thoroughly miserable. I'm still pre-op, something which gives me endless opportunities to gripe and complain, which are my main pastimes.

My other main pastime is video-games, which is relevant inasmuch as I eventually realised that the character I was role-playing was actually me: it was an escape from "real life role-playing" where I'd adopted a male persona to try to fit in and meet everyone else's expectations, which eventually struck me as being a rather silly situation to find myself in so the real me finally made an appearance.

And prior to all that, I started to realise that something was amiss back in 1980ish, just prior to hitting puberty. During early childhood, the differences between boys and girls were rather lost on me and I'd assumed they were largely arbitrary designations: until I was about 10 or 11, I was happy enough being whatever I was. Then things started to change: I found myself wanting to do things that the girls were doing: not in any obvious "I want to be a girl!" sort of a way, at least not then: it was a lot more insidious, an interest in the way they dressed, their shoes, their jewellery and so on. And then puberty was a thoroughly miserable time of my life, when I remember being yelled at about not wanting to grow up. Damn right, I certainly didn't want to grow into a man, the idea horrified and upset me. Eventually I resigned myself to the awfulness of it and turned into a rather withdrawn misery. Anyone reading and struggling with their own decision, please take the hint to not do that!

Here's a before-and-after picture. I may look happier in the first picture, but believe me, I wasn't. And I was just too lazy to attempt to smile in the second!

So what else is there? Well other than the malarky surrounding my transition, I was born in Jarrow at the tail end of the '60s, a town which a friend referred to as "The Jewel of the North". I suspect there's a possibility he wasn't being entirely serious. I moved down south, went to college, and worked as a computer programmer, sysadmin, web developer and stuff like that until, well, I couldn't do it any more. Hopefully I'll get back to it once I'm done.

I live in Oxford with my long-term and long-suffering girlfriend. We have no children, and currently, no cats. She's been incredibly supportive, and the vast majority of my friends have been accepting of the "new" me.

I also play bass quite badly and take poorly-composed photographs.

I prefer to identify as female, lesbian and a generally grumpy old bag.